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five-year-old girl named Lola walked to the front door of a small home in Liverpool, New York on a cold October morning. She reached up and gave the doorbell a ring, changing everything for the family inside.

Alan Dombroski, the homeowner, answered the door and was handed a small green piggy bank. Inside was $133 originally intended to pay for a trip to Disney World. Now, Lola was giving it all away because of the fire.

The night before, the backyard of that same property, 7475 Thunderbird Lane, was torched by an electrical fire. It reduced the Raven Haven haunted house — the pride of the Dombroski family since 2003 — to nothing but ash. There were more than 200 people there, but no one was hurt.

“There wasn’t so much as even a stubbed toe,” said Katy Dombroski, Alan’s wife of 47 years. “We were organized and we had enough of our people in the yard that escorted people out.”

The Dombroskis had figured that was the end of Raven Haven — that after the blaze, they wouldn’t ever recover. But support like Lola’s wasn’t something they couldn’t turn away. On Oct. 19, 2014, they decided they wouldn’t let the fire smother their Halloween happiness. With tears in his eyes, Alan reluctantly accepted the donation.

Now with rekindled spirits and a reconstructed haunt, Raven Haven is back at full strength for the 2016 season. It opened last weekend and will continue to spook visitors to the Dombrowski’s backyard this weekend through Halloween night. And they have Lola to thank.

“Lola is responsible for us rebuilding,” Katy said. “She’s the reason I even have a haunt.”

It wasn’t an easy road. The Dombroskis had friction with local authorities when it came to rebuilding the backyard structure that housed the haunt.

Zoning issues and miscommunications dragged out a process that ideally wouldn’t have taken almost two years. Some claimed the Dombroski’s operation was a “commercial haunt,” even though they’ve never charged a dime. It was a process that saw court hearings and coverage on the local news.

But complications couldn’t stop the haunt. Just weeks after the fire, Raven Haven was open on Halloween night with a full haunt in a large tent on loan from one of their volunteer actors.

Raven Haven was housed in the same tent in 2015, and the Dombrowskis kept fighting to rebuild. Finally, a judge ruled in their favor, and the backyard building that Alan Dombroski originally constructed over a decade ago could be reincarnated.

The family first thought about building a haunt in 2001, when a neighbor had an impressive garage display. The Dombroskis gave it a go themselves in 2002 and attracted roughly 300 people just by word of mouth. With that success, it was time to go bigger.

“(Alan) is a firm believer in if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” Katy said. “So he built the following summer a 16 by 32 building for nothing but the haunt.”

Raven Haven grew each year. Katy got them involved with the Western New York Haunters, an organization intended to promote and discuss local haunts. Members bring different expertise to the table, sharing what they know and helping each other out.

Frightmare Farms in Palermo, New York led a movement of taking up collections and lending props. One fellow haunter even offered to donate his best one: a homemade electric chair.

It was this community — along with neighbors and friends — that made the resurgence of Raven Haven possible after the accident.

“What amazed me after the fire was the community response to us,” Katy Dombroski said. “… We had neighbors bring food, we had neighbors handing me cash, writing checks.”

And it’s this same camaraderie that enables the haunt to run smoothly on weekend nights during the Halloween season. Katy said on average, they have somewhere between 20 and 30 volunteers helping out each night. Her son Scott and his wife Diana Sleiertin do most of the work now since Katy has had some knee troubles, but she’s still around, overseeing things in full costume.

The rest of the team is a wide range of characters. Inside the Dombroski split-level — which is filled with skull and wolf decor in every means imaginable — they are in full preparation mode until just moments before the gates open at 7 p.m.

Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer

A kitchen table becomes a face paint and makeup salon. A living room becomes an operating room, and a stuffed koala is bloodied up with red paint. A doll is attached to one actress’s torso, its head and arms protruding from her blouse.

Just before Raven Haven opens, anyone still not in costume throws on the all-important black robe. No longer are they Laura Cook, who is in her fourth year volunteering, or Ally Sauter, from Cicero, who made her debut last week. They’re now ghouls, witches, creatures — and they’re having a blast.

“It’s a hell of a lot more fun to scare the piss out of someone than to be scared,” Cook said. “Halloween was boring until I started scaring people.”

Sauter shares a similar appreciation for scaring.

“I made a lot of people cry. It’s really funny,” Sauter said of her first time in character.

Once they’re dressed, it’s go time. Everyone acting for the night assembles in the backyard. Before one frightening rally cry, Sleiertin gives a quick pep talk, going over emergency procedures and scare tactic reminders: go easy on the little ones, but adults are fair game.

For some, that’s easy. Take Shiann Fenton of Liverpool. She wasn’t in face paint Saturday because she had to babysit later in the night. But that didn’t affect her area of expertise.

“I scream,” she said, when asked what role in the haunt she plays.

And scream she did. She’s small in stature, but her vocal cords aren’t. Her screeches could be heard from anywhere on the property.

Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer

Others aren’t into scares the way that Cooke, Sauter and Fenton are. Even Sleiertin, essentially the one in charge when the haunt is open, said she thinks the whole thing is a riot.

“I have nightmares. I don’t do horror,” she said. “For me, it’s two completely different worlds.”

Sleiertin is able to bring her work life to Raven Haven. Founder of MaxMan Reptile Rescue, she has snakes in the haunt — just in case fictional monsters don’t scare enough.

Volunteers provide Raven Haven’s character, and props complete the illusion. A custom airbrushed 1992 Cadillac hearse sits in the driveway. Doll heads top fence posts that lead to the haunt. Other backyard attractions include an animatronic werewolf and a seemingly-bottomless pit.

Inside the haunt itself, actors stand motionless and lurch toward unsuspecting visitors. In one segment, the darkness makes finding the door a challenge. In another, walls made entirely of mirrors make navigation a nightmare.

But the reason this spectacle still exists comes before all of the props. It’s easy to miss, but without it, there would be no haunt at all. It sits just inside the slamming door where visitors enter: Lola’s green piggy bank.

Published on October 26, 2016 at 7:38 pm

Contact: jtbloss@syr.edu | @jtbloss